Follow the brown signs

Brown Sign Torch Relay Day 1: Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum

On day 1 of the Brown Sign Torch Relay I’m not embarrassed to admit I’m pretty bloody excited, and I know you are secretly too. So, I had a quick squiz at the map of where the Olympic torch is today and saw that it was near Bugle (great name) at around 3pm in Cornwall. I did a bit of research to see what was around the area and happened upon The Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum, interesting name and not the Eden Project (which is where everyone in the world is tweeting pictures from). We all know The Eden Project and they need no plug from me.

I called the very friendly and enthusiastic lady at the museum and she was very happy to be part of my alternative brown sign torch relay. She told me that they are in fact the only china clay mining museum in the country. I’ve been to a clay pit/pool before in Dorset (Blue Pool) and started to tell her all about it and the pipes they made there but was told that the clay mined there was most certainly not china, it’s ball clay, there’s a difference. The Wheale Martyn China Clay Museum not only has a great interactive museum where you can learn all about the long but little known history of clay mining in Devon and Cornwall, but also has nature walks, huge mining machinery and you can watch modern clay mining using monitor water jets. Pretty impressive no? Their website details the history of the china mining industry and I got engrossed reading. Who knew that it was a Quaker who, in 1746, first made the discovery that there was clay in Cornwall’s soil and that it was of much higher quality than anywhere else in Europe? And that 80% of Cornwall’s clay is used in paper, 12% is used by the ceramics industry and the remainder in products such as paint, rubber, plastics, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, cork and agricultural products. Wowzers. And there’s a bleeding waterwheel there for the love of God AND they run events such as make your own bunting and pottery painting workshops and Nordic walking, I’m not even joking. Absolutely loving The Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum, loving it I tell you. What a belting Day 1. More tomorrow 🙂